hms iron duke

Thursday, 31 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 31
July. Australia is living proof that a
West still exists and that its beating heart lies not in the tangled nonsense
of failing Americans and pathetic Europeans but deep Down Under.

Two old friends took me
to task this week. My immediate reaction
to both honoured the great Yorkshire tradition of tolerance known colloquially as
“bugger off”. I come from the ‘Sir’
Geoffrey Boycott (Yorkshire God) school of international relations. Normally, my reaction to such over-pitched
deliveries is either to avoid the corridor of uncertainty and take my bat away or
to play the ball straight back past the bowler for four. However upon reflection, which is about as rare
to those of us born to the White Rose as a sighting of the sun, I decided my
friends may both have a point.

In an influential piece
an old American friend Stan Sloan posed the question, “Does the ‘West’ Exist?” Stan felt I should have been addressing this
issue more directly. Another good friend, Captain Simon Reay Atkinson of the
Royal Australian Navy took me to task for not having given Australia its
rightful due in my piece “Dignified Dutch, Revisionist Russia”.

Anyone who watched
Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans brilliant verbal requiem to the MH 17
dead at the UN Security Council will have been deeply moved. Yet, few in the old, creaking, strategically
pretentious West will have witnessed the equally moving testament of Australian
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. At
Eindhoven Airport last week a Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster stood
on the tarmac next to a Dutch Air Force Hercules to return the fallen of MH 17
to the Netherlands. In Ukraine the strong
presence of Australian officials demonstrates the very real lead Prime Minister
Tony Abbott has taken to return MH 17 bodies to loved one and to find the
criminals who committed the crime.

Britain is a prime
example of the heart disease from which the old West suffers. London is now so lost up its own rear end in
a form of strategic political correctness that it is scared to say “boo to a
goose”, as we say in Yorkshire. Worried that
any act may offend some uppity minority, or that any decision might contravene
increasingly tyrannical EU ‘law’ Little Britain now hovers been irrelevance and
break-up. For a patriotic Englishman the
failure of Britain’s political elite to protect British interests is deeply
depressing.

Contrast that with
Australia. It took the lead over the
search for MH 370 just as it has taken the lead over MH 17. Far from retreating behind empty rhetoric in
the wake of the failed Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns Australia instead
conducted a proper strategic analysis of its strategy and defence needs. Indeed, it is perhaps the one Western country
that is led by a prime minister who actually seems to understand strategy and
power. As a kid Abbott was an avid
follower of Jane’s Fighting Ships at a time when the Royal Navy filled more than
one at best two of its pages.

Australia is investing
in a future force that will reinforce the clout Australia is steadily
developing in international fora. This
reinforces something that Britain and the rest of Europe too often seems to
have forgotten and which Stan’s great piece identifies; the defence of freedom,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not achieved with rhetoric or yet
another pointless, self-paralyzing and self-defeating (literally) Brussels EU meeting. It is achieved by determination, investment,
effort, cohesion and a proper sense of strategy.

Currently the
Commonwealth Games are taking place in Glasgow.
Fifty-seven states, nations and territories from across the world are competing
in an event that on the face of it seems an anachronism of British Empire. In fact the Commonwealth is a free
association of free states and peoples that grew out of the Empire but which
today has nothing to do with it.
Instead, the Commonwealth is the new West, part of a world-wide web of
democracies which Australia is helping to lead.

Today’s Commonwealth
says something else about the West. It
is far more effective when it is organised in loose confederations of aligned
interest than the one-size-fits-all straitjacket that is the failing EU.

Stan Sloan says in his
piece that the relationship between liberal democratic values and free markets
that has come to define the West is also its essential weakness because it
sometimes forces states to compromise the former in favour of the latter –
Russian gas. Stan, here I beg to
differ. Australia demonstrates that the
mix of the two is still a potent force so long as a state retains sufficient
national sovereignty to feel comfortable and self-confident about the choices
its makes and its ability to make informed choices. In other words the West is essentially about
balance and it is that which Europeans in particular have abandoned and which has
been so badly exposed by MH 17.

Why is Australia
guardian of the West? Because Australia like
the Commonwealth of which it is a vital part proves the West is an idea not a
place and that for its values to survive it must be invested in. Given Australia’s place in Asia-Pacific it
cannot afford to delude itself about security, strategy or interests.

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 29
July. French statesmen Charles Maurice
de Talleyrand once said, “To succeed in the world it is much more necessary to discern
who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man”. The tragedy of MH17 is about so much more than
the murder of 300 people or even the tragedy of eastern Ukraine. It is about a Moscow that has decided to
become a radical, revisionist power and a Europe that simply does not want to
recognise that.

Living here in the
Netherlands during these dark, depressed post MH17 days the contrast between
two very different cultures is stark. The
Kremlin seems to have retreated into a self-justifying, self-pitying narrative that
somehow the West has got it in for Russia and Moscow must act whatever the cost. The Netherlands and its people by contrast have
behaved with a quiet, solemn dignity as the bodies of MH17’s fallen have all-too-slowly
returned. There is little or no talk of
retribution here. It is a profound clash
of cultures that concerns two very different ways of seeing the world.

Yesterday I learnt that
the black boxes from MH17 confirm what the world already knew – the Malaysian
Boeing 777 airliner was shot down by a missile. The immediate cause is clear; one-group of
pro-Russian separatists under pressure from Ukrainian forces fired an SA11
missile at what they thought was a Ukrainian Air Force military transport. It was an act of brutally indifferent
incompetence made possible by Russia.

Indeed, it is not just MH17
or the illegal annexation of Crimea or even the incompetent proxy and
not-so-proxy de facto occupation of eastern Ukraine that confirms my fears of a
Kremlin (and I mean Kremlin) that has radically changed strategic course over
the past year. Through the testing of a
new ground-launched cruise missile Russia is now in possible breach of that
cornerstone of European security the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.

And that is the
essential problem for Europe; an inability to understand the extent to which
Russia has changed track. Proof may well
come in the next couple of weeks. As pro-Russian
separatists are forced back on Donetsk and Luhansk Moscow must decide whether
it will allow their collapse or intervene.
Moscow’s worse nightmare would be a sudden collapse of the separatists
with significant amounts of Russian heavy weapons suddenly falling into
Ukrainian hands.

This morning the EU
will agree new sanctions on Russia. Much
of the haggling over the past few days within the EU has been about how best to
share the consequent pain of imposing sanctions against Russia. New EU sanctions will be imposed on the
defence, energy and finance sectors but they will be sufficiently limited not
to hurt Berlin, Paris and London too much.
The French will still sell their warships to Russia, Germany will still
send advanced engineering components to Russia’s gas industry and the City of London
will still be a haven for dodgy Russia money.
Indeed, it appears that Chancellor Merkel only agreed to even these
limited measures because President Putin did not return three of her telephone
calls this past week.

Here in the Netherlands
the question I have been asked repeatedly by my Dutch friends, family and
neighbours is that eternal question at such moments – why? For all my many years of experience in the
business of statecraft it is not a question I can easily answer. Talleyrand once said that, “The art of
statecraft is to foresee the inevitable and expedite its occurrence”.

The Kremlin seems to
believe that conflict is inevitable and that Russia must prevail. Working with Russian colleagues over many
years I have been struck often by how vulnerable Russia is to a sense of
conspiratorial victimhood to justify good old-fashioned Machtpolitik. If so then
2014 will mark much more than mere culture clash. Indeed, the loss of MH 17 may not be the 2014
equivalent of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduchess
Sophie. However, it is one of those big
summer moments in European history.

It has been an honour
to live here amongst a great people these past couple of weeks. To see the strength of the Dutch still seared
by anger and disbelieving incredulity that something like MH17 could happen in 2014
Europe. Will EU sanctions and other
pressures be enough to force Russia to return to the standards of international
behaviour implicit in Dutch dignity? My
sense is not and that Russia is indeed committed to a new strategic course of
action of which Ukraine is but one element. If Russia invades eastern Ukraine what then? Time will soon tell.

Friday, 25 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 28
July. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail
the somewhat weak-kneed and weak of will Sir Robin confronted by the Three-Headed Knight says to
King Arthur, “Would it help to confuse him if we ran away more?” I was reminded of this scene when doing a TV
interview yesterday to discuss the debacle of the EU’s pathetic non-response to
MH17 and Russia’s continuing proxy and not-so proxy aggression in Eastern
Ukraine. Unless Moscow changes tack something
even bigger and nastier is about to happen. Russia is now locked onto a course that
somehow or another will see it take another part of Ukraine. And yet in the face of such aggression EU
member-states seem more interested in fighting each other than blunting Russian
ambitions. Yet again EU foreign policy has
been proved not to work. Why?

Yesterday Sir Tony
Brenton the former British ambassador to Moscow discussed the crisis. He told a story that explains all too
graphically why the EU routinely fails in a crisis. While serving in Moscow he received the text
for the May 2003 “EU-Russia Common Spaces” agreement. This long-term plan suggested four grand
spaces: a Common Economic Space; a Common Space for Freedom, Security and
Justice; a Common Space of External Security; and a Common Space of Research
and Education. So meaninglessly lofty
was the document and so lacking in diplomatic substance that Sir Tony read it
out to his appalled staff. This EU
fantasy was about as far as one could get from applied statecraft.

It highlighted the three
essential dilemmas of the EU and its so-called external relations. First, EU external relations only work so
long as no-one really tests it. That is
why Brussels loves the long-term and the meaningless language of unstrategic ‘strategic
partnerships’. Second, the only crisis
the EU really focuses on is the eternal internal crisis that the EU has
become. One only has to look at the
ridiculously labyrinthine structure of the European External Action Service to
recognise it is just about the worst possible instrument to conduct real time
crisis management. Third, as soon a
crisis breaks the member-states are far more concerned about using the EU to
shift the burdens and costs of crisis management onto other member-states than
actually confronting the challenge.

That is precisely what
happened this week. On Tuesday EU
foreign ministers met to discuss tougher sanctions on Russia in the wake of MH
17. They could not agree. Britain wanted to protect its financial
services sector, France wanted to protect its warships deal, Germany wanted to
protect the 25,000 German jobs dependent on the oil and gas sector it shares
with Russia, and Italy did not want anything that would reveal the Faustian
energy pact it has struck with Moscow. Only
those Central and Eastern European members in the firing line of Putinism were
really willing to confront the wider strategic implications of Moscow’s actions
which had been re-iterated by President Putin as recently as his 1 July speech
to Russian diplomats.

As usual when there is
an impasse the European Commission was sent away to consider more sanctions. The draft document that emerged yesterday and
which will be discussed by ministers today was archetypal of all that is
wrong with EU foreign and security policy.
It was little more than a blatant Franco-German attempt to shift almost
all the cost of any further sanctions onto Britain and the City of London. So much for the impartiality of the European
Commission. And, far from deterring
Russia this absurdly unbalanced document if enforced would probably do more to
push Britain closer to an EU exit than damage Russia.

The consequence is not
just an expensive foreign policy white elephant, and the EU is certainly
that. So much political energy is
expended by EU member-states trying to out-manoeuvre each other for narrow,
short-term gain within the EU (in EU parlance the search for common positions
and joint action) that their own national foreign policies are gravely weakened. Britain is a classic example of this. For that reason the EU foreign and security
policy whole is far smaller than the parts of its sum resulting in a Europe
that punches way below its weight not just in the world but also in Europe.

In the long-term either
Europeans move towards a genuine EU foreign policy or they renationalise their
efforts to enable the construction of coalitions of like-minded states. The problem with the former idea is that it
would require an EU Foreign Ministry which would in turn need a country called ‘Europe’. The problem with the latter idea is that it
would mean an end to the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.

The bottom-line is
this; until Russia sees that Europeans are prepared to face economic pain to
blunt Moscow’s ambitions they will continue to regard the EU as somewhat of a
foreign policy joke; an institution long on grand declaratory rhetoric and very
short on power and substance. And, until
all Europeans are prepared to share such pain equitably then any and all such
efforts will do more damage to each other than the intended miscreant.

If Europeans continue
to hide a no man’s land of foreign policy irrelevance and incompetence they
will be victims of the twenty-first century rather than shapers of it. So, what
will the EU and its member-states do to blunt President Putin’s ambitions? Run away more.
That should confuse the blighter!

Wednesday, 23 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 23
July. Predictably the EU fell apart
yesterday over what to do about Russia. Naturally the assembled foreign ministers all pretended otherwise but
the only winner was President Putin. There was a motley extension to the motley
collection of asset freezes and travel bans and some talk of future sanctions
covering the energy, financial services and defence sectors. It was only talk. And of course Britain and France
fell out (again). France accused Britain
of hypocrisy over London’s demand that Paris halt the €1.2bn sale of two
state-of-the-art French warships to Russia.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius not unreasonably pointed out that
Britain has been far too “no questions asked” about the London money of Russian
oligarchs close to President Putin. The
French were too polite to point out that Britain still has some 252 active arms
export licenses worth some £132m for the sale of weapons to Russia. For all that it is inconceivable that in the
current situation France would help Russia create an entirely new expeditionary
military capability.

These are not any old
new warships. Weighing in at 21500 tons
the Mistral-class ships are
state-of-the-art marine amphibious command and assault ships that for the first
time ever will give Russia the ability to launch from the sea 450 special and
specialised forces supported by helicopters and tanks. The first of the ships is due to be handed
over to the Russia Navy in October. France
says that Russia has promised not to use them in its ‘near abroad’.
Nonsense. These two ships could be deployed
anywhere around Europe from the High North to the Baltic Sea, from the Black
Sea to the Mediterranean.

France must stop
talking contracts and start thinking strategy.
That means seizing the ships.
There is a precedent. One hundred years ago in August 1914 the British
seized a brand new battleship they had been building first for the Brazilians
and then when that deal fell through for the Turks. Winston Churchill personally insisted the
ship be taken into British custody. She
was a state-of-the art Super-Dreadnought battleship with 14 12 inch guns,
displacing 30,000 tons and capable of 22 knots.

Although contractually
obliged the British Government of the day felt the strategic situation of the
day warranted seizure. As one can
imagine the Ottoman Empire was none too pleased by the seizure (along with one
other new battleship) and some scholars believe it helped to push
Constantinople towards Wilhelmine Germany.
Still, they could have been used against the Royal Navy and that would
have been just a tad embarrassing.

The problem of course with
seizure (apart from a seriously peeved Putin) would be what to do with the
ships. The French Navy has neither the
personnel nor the budget needed to crew two new ships of this size. However, there
are three alternative, very non-Russian options that Paris may wish to consider:
1. create a new Anglo-French strike force; 2. make the ships NATO common assets
paid for by NATO Europe; or 3. make the ships the first EU-owned assets at the
core of a new maritime amphibious Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF).

Under the 2010 Franco-British
Defence and Security Co-operation Treaty the two countries are working up a CJEF. Current efforts have been focused on
co-operation between air and land forces.
However, with the launch of the two British super aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales the addition of the
two Mistrals to a maritime amphibious CJEF would markedly enhance the ability
of the two countries to launch and sustain significant operations from the
sea. This would ensure Britain and
France were at the centre of efforts to enhance the expeditionary capabilities
of Europeans but also offer real support to hard-pressed Americans. The problem as with all ships of this size is
their crewing but that is not beyond the bounds of sensible solution.

One of the big issues
at September’s NATO Wales Summit will be burden-sharing. The ships could become a NATO-owned asset in
which all Alliance members invest. The
Alliance would then in effect purchase the ships from France and they would be
crewed by personnel from all NATO nations – just like the Luxembourg-registered
E3 aerial surveillance vessels. The
beauty of this elegant solution to France’s dilemma is that the purchase and
subsequent crewing would go some way to helping some NATO members get towards
the 2% GDP defence investment target the Americans regard as the minimum. It would also help the Alliance develop a
serious European High Readiness Force (Maritime).

A third option would be
to make them the first EU-owned common defence assets to give EU Battle Groups
a much-needed capability boost. Indeed,
the ships would certainly help to create an enhanced EU maritime amphibious capability. It would help France lead the way towards the
5000 strong expeditionary EU force former President Sarkozy called for back in
2008. One option would be to place the
ships at the heart of a project cluster involving several EU member-states
under permanent structured co-operation, possibly the Weimar Triangle. By making such a move France would again be firmly
at the helm of efforts to enhance the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy
(CSDP).

There is one other
option; one hundred years on from Entente Cordiale France could generously give
one of the ships to the Royal Navy. The
Russians had intended to name one of the ships Vladivostok and the other somewhat provocatively Sevastopol. Again there is a precedent for such name changes. In 1914 the British christened the new battleship
HMS Agincourt (of course). In 2014 the British could offer the French a
choice; HMS Crecy, HMS Waterloo or how about HMS Trafalgar?

Monday, 21 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 21
July. “Why don’t the Russians care about the people on that plane?” That was
the question a friend of mine put to me this morning. It is a question I find hard to answer. Of course, the Russians do care about what
happened, especially the Russian people.
No-one in Russia wanted this ghastly disaster but Russia must be held
account for what happened because Moscow made the disaster possible. However, that begs an even bigger question;
how much do WE care about MH17?

The evidence for what
happened is now undeniable even by the Kremlin. Last Thursday MH17 was shot out of the skies
by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile that was either fired by a pro-Russian
separatist with a Russian advisor standing by or possibly even by a Russian GRU
(military intelligence) officer. Four
Ukrainian military aircraft had been shot down over the previous week by
Russian missiles a part of an attempt by Russian forces to help the separatists
blunt a Ukrainian offensive into eastern Ukraine.

This morning President
Putin said that “all must be done to end the conflict”. However, whilst the Kremlin did not want this
to happen Moscow only ‘cares’ about MH17 and the victims who died therein in so
much as the disaster complicates the politics of an expansionist strategy to
which Russia remains fully committed.

So, how much do ‘WE’
care? There are options open to the West
– both Europeans and North Americans – which would hurt an already vulnerable
Russian economy. Tighter travel and
financial sanctions could be imposed on top officials in the Kremlin. Deeper and far better co-ordinated so-called ‘sectoral
sanctions’ could be imposed by both North Americans and Europeans on the Russian
energy and technology sectors that build-on the restrictions imposed by
Washington last Wednesday. Such
sanctions could be further reinforced by a complete stop to all development loans
and co-operation projects by the EU and which build-on last week’s limited EU
action prior to MH17’s downing.

However, any deeper
sanctions will be a real test of ‘WE’ as further strictures would hurt
Europeans and their vulnerable economies in particular. Hence the question how much do WE care? The question also pre-supposes the idea that a
‘WE’ actually still exists. The idea of
a ‘West’ is open to serious doubt so dysfunctional has the relationship
become. The idea of a ‘Europe’ is even open
to ridicule so pathetic has the EU response been and so utterly dysfunctional what
might be termed a European foreign policy.

Britain, France and
Germany finally stepped into the leadership void over the weekend by jointly calling
for stringent measures to be taken against Russia. However, the strange foreign policy no-man’s
land that now exists between the EU and its member-states has reduced the
European ‘whole’ to far less than the parts of its sum. Indeed, too many EU member-states no longer
have a foreign policy at all (Britain most particularly). What is left is a kind of transactional
politics in which ‘foreign policy’ is directly linked to perceived economic
cost.

President Putin knows
this. Today, the foreign ‘policies’ of
Europe are measured purely and only in terms of ‘cost’ rather than the defence of
values central to democracies.
Therefore, concerted action against aggression reduced to a balance
sheet analysis of immediate cost given the varying trade and energy
relationships Europeans ‘enjoy’ with Russia.
Any sense of a ‘WE’ goes straight out of the crisis window.

A real test for
Europeans will come tomorrow at an EU meeting called ostensibly to discuss a
new approach to Russia. If European
leaders are serious about facing down Russian expansionism and the arms flows
that created the conditions for the loss of MH17 and 298 innocent people they
will be judged by their actions.

If Europe’s leaders are
serious Russian oil-giant Rosneft will tomorrow be removed from the London
Stock Exchange by London, France will scrap the €1.2 billion sale of two
Mistral class advanced maritime assault ships to Russia and Germany will scrap a
whole host of trade deals with Russia. A
strong signal would also be sent to Moscow if Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl
Bildt is immediately appointed EU Foreign Minister and with immediate effect.

Additionally, access of
Russian firms to European financial markets will be blocked even though that
would hurt London and Frankfurt. If serious
the meeting will also confirm Ukraine’s status as an EU Strategic Partner and
consider accelerated measures to wean Europeans off Russian energy supplies
which admittedly will take time. There
would also be a decision to end once and for all the agreement to construct the
Ukraine-bypassing South Stream Pipeline to supply gas from Russia to the rest of
Europe.

So, is there sufficient
of a ‘WE’. No. The same old EU empty nonsense will emerge
from the same old type of meeting as very little action is doubtless blown-up in
the communique into “decisive measures”.
Italy and others will block anything that might in any way affect their
Faustian energy deals with Russia. It is
questionable whether Britain, France and Germany are really prepared to take together
real steps that would hurt both Russia and themselves in the name of principle. After all trade relations between Russia and
its fellow Europeans (particularly Germany) are worth ten times that of
Russian-US trade links.

President Putin fully
understands all this. He understands that
in this crisis as in so many others there is no ‘WE’ – neither a Western ‘WE’ nor
a European ‘WE’. Indeed, his
superficially emollient words of this morning are specifically designed to
undermine the already very little ‘WE’ that exists.

Thursday, 17 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 17
July. Today I was at Amsterdam Schiphol
airport picking my father up. There can
be little doubt I walked past the poor people of many nationalities whose
remains are smouldering as I write on the Steppe close to the Russia-Ukrainian
border. It is of course too early to
tell what or who downed Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 as it made its way from
Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. However, the known
circumstances, the location, tweets from pro-Russian separatists congratulating
themselves for shooting down a Ukrainian military plane that coincide with the
loss of MH 17 and other information which I have seen all point to a
surface-to-air missile of Russian design as being responsible.

Let me say at the
outset that Russia did not do this. The
chance that a state-of-the-art Russian military system under Russian military
control was used is very small indeed.
Such advanced systems would have had an Identification Friend or Foe
(IFF) safeguard that would have ‘tagged’ MH 17 as soon as it was ‘painted’ as a
target. What is far more likely is that an older, less sophisticated system
such as an SA 11 (NATO codename ‘Grail’) or something similar was
involved. Such systems are known to be
in the hands of the separatists who may or may not have the capability to
operate the system effectively. There is
clear evidence that Russian military equipment is making its way across the
border between Russia and Ukraine and the Ukrainian military may have lost some
SA 11s during Russia’s occupation of Ukraine-Crimea.

It is equally unlikely
to have been the responsibility of the Ukrainian military. Two Ukrainian military aircraft have been
lost over the past 48 hours to missiles fired either from within the separatist
area or possibly even from over the border in Russia. There has certainly been a clear escalation
over the past few days and there can be little doubt Moscow is pulling the
strings.

Last week I published a
piece for the RUSI Journal entitled “Ukraine:
Understanding Russia”. In the article I
tried to look at the conflict from the Russian viewpoint because too often
other Europeans simply impose their assumptions on Russia. Equally, I am no apologist for Russia. My fellow sitting on the fence Europeans trying
to explain Russian aggression away at almost any cost also have to look hard at
themselves. For example, how can France possibly
sell two state-of-the-art amphibious attack ships to a country that is creating
and managing such a conflict in twenty-first century Europe?

Of course Russia did
not want this awful disaster to happen and President Putin rightly called
President Obama the moment he heard of the disaster. However, the bottom-line is this; Moscow must
bear some of the responsibility for this disaster. In 2014 it is Moscow that has created the
conditions which has led to the loss of a civilian airliner carrying 295 innocent people to a surface-to-air missile over European airspace by fuelling the
crisis and arming the separatists. In 2014
only Russia can create the conditions for a peaceful resolution to this
conflict by insisting on and joining the EU to help craft a negotiated constitutional settlement
for a Ukraine at peace with itself and its neighbours. To make that happen Moscow
must stop its efforts to de-stabilise the Kiev regime and begin to behave in a
manner befitting the Great Power Russia is.

Sadly, I fear I may be witnessing
quite the reverse. Indeed, Moscow could
well be on the verge of launching a classically Russian ‘August’ stratagem. In 2008 Moscow waited until the midst of the
European summer holidays to launch its invasion of Georgia. Russian forces are now again building up on
Ukraine’s border, increased volumes of Russian military supplies and advisers
are crossing the border into Ukraine in support of the separatists and more aggressive
action is already evident.

If Moscow has any sense
of the damage it is doing to Europe but above all to Russia itself the loss of
MH 17 must be pause for reflection. At
the very least Russia owes such reflection to the grieving relatives of the
people past whom I walked today who are now the unwitting victims, the lost
souls to a the ridiculous and tragic theatre of Russia’s twenty-first century
insidious Machtpolitik.

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 July. Dear Fellow Blog Blasters, I have today published a new Eisenhower Paper for NATO entitled "Connected Forces through Connected Education: Harnessing NATO's & Partner Nations Strategic Educational Resources". Snappy title, eh? It is of course brilliant. However, if you disagree once downloaded the paper can be alternatively used for a range of practical and bodily purposes.

To download the piece please go to http://www.ndc.nato.int/download/downloads.php?icode=415 If that fails and you really do wish to read it please go to the NATO Defense College web-site.

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 15
July. Herodotus, the father of history
wrote, “Force has no place where there is a need of skill”. In the Middle East there is a desperate need
for ‘skill’. Like Europe a century ago
today or more accurately Europe on the eve of the 1618 Thirty Years War
everyone and everything is deeply connected and yet at the same time dangerously
divided – the classic cause of what Thomas Hobbes called “a warre of all
against all”. What is at stake and what next?

Israeli forces enter
Gaza following the murder of three Israeli teenagers and up to two hundred
Palestinians die. Shia Iran extends its
influence over Baghdad as the Sunni Islamic State is proclaimed in parts of
what used to Iraq and Syria. Saudi Arabia
mobilises its forces as the Sunni-Shia split deepens across the Middle East
whilst states as far apart as Algeria and the Gulf totter in the face of
Islamism and liberalism as elites and societies pull apart.

What is at stake? Three
fundamental struggles are combining to threaten peace across the region (and
beyond); the state versus the anti-state; the battle for regional-strategic
dominance by states and the struggle between interpretations of Islam within
failing states. Although ostensibly about
religion the Thirty Year wars (for that is what they were) were complicated by
shifting ‘state’ power - the Habsburgs versus the Holy Roman Empire and the
European core versus the European periphery - England, Sweden and Russia. They were further complicated by growing populations
and divided ideologies.

Critically, the war was
triggered in 1618 by a relatively minor but nevertheless explosive event – a
constitutional dispute between Protestants in Bohemia and their Catholic rulers
and the destruction of a single Protestant church. What happened next was unimaginable carnage.

Similar dangerous
connectivities are apparent across the Middle East today, particularly as
notions of pan-Arabism compete. The
Islamic State and the rise of fundamentalism has been fashioned from the failure
of Arab nationalism, specifically the collapse of Baathism in Syria and
Iraq. The Islamic State is in fact an
anti-state the very existence of which threatens all other states in the region
as it seeks the destruction of the entire state system and its replacement with
a Caliphate.

To many Arabs
nationalism once seemed the future acting in uneasy tandem with and in the name
of pan-Arabism. It was nationalism fuelled
and reinforced by the creation of the State of Israel in 1947. However, two crushing defeats by Israel in
1967 and 1973 helped to undermine the credibility of both the Arab ‘state’ and
nationalism in the minds of many. Defeat
also helped Islamists offer a new form of pan-Arabism - Sunni fundamentalism.

The Arab state has been
further undermined by corrupt elites, a rapidly growing population and an
imbalance of wealth across the region.
In states such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States oil-rich conservative
elites have become fabulously rich whilst at the same time reluctant to disseminate
wealth too widely. They are like all
such elites fearful that reform would critically undermine their power. To buy off opposition Riyadh in particular has
at times appealed to extreme conservatism to buttress their power in return for
funding the exporting of the very fundamentalism that threatens the Kingdom.

And then there is
Iran. Shia-Persian Iran’s
regional-strategic ambitions to be the dominant power have also further
complicated an already flammable political landscape. Worse, in its struggle with both Israel and
Saudi Arabia and through the use of proxies in Syria and Lebanon a series of
bilateral disputes have slowly morphed into one enormous confrontation over the
future shape of the Middle East focussed on the relatively small space in and
around Jordan. Good old-fashioned Machtpolitik informs much of Iran’s
policy but also what Tehran sees as a Sunni threat to Shia influence Iran
believes it controls.

What next? The Middle East is in as dangerous a state as
at any time since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Indeed, it is hard to see how the acute tension in both Arab societies
and between Middle Eastern states and with Israel can be resolved
peacefully. The outstanding question is
who will be on what side for what reason?
It would be easy to suggest that a future war would be essentially
between those states of Shia extraction and those of Sunni extraction. This would have Iran and Israel on the
side-lines but seeking to influence proxies in a general Arab struggle. However, the Middle East is simply not that
easy. Such a scenario would be
complicated by ethnic divisions within many of the states involved rotting from
the top down, which is precisely why the Islamic State has appeared. It would be further complicated by
interference from the Great Powers – America, China, European powers and
Russia. In other words a kind of
Sykes-Picot revisited.

The war itself could be
triggered by what is in systemic terms a relatively minor event. It would also be a long war with hatred and
calculus causing many twists. The first war
is likely to be triggered by an unofficial, unspoken and unlikely ‘coalition’
of states determined to defeat the Islamic State, i.e. to destroy the
anti-state. Such a coalition might
include Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Egypt and even by extension Israel,
albeit implicitly.

However, if and when
the Islamic State is defeated much would be unresolved, not least between Iran
and Israel. To protect its borders and break the link between Iran and
Hezbollah Israel would do all it can to establish some form of influence over an
Assad successor regime to in Syria. Any
conflict that strengthens the hand of Iran on Israel’s borders would be seen by
Tel Aviv as a zero-sum game. For the
sake of its very survival Israel will not and could not tolerate such an
outcome. Iran in turn would also seek to
establish influence over Damascus and Baghdad as it attempts to extend its
sphere of influence across the Middle East.
Riyadh will act to prevent what it sees as a threat not just to the
Kingdom but the wider region over which it too exerts influence.

Of course, the great
unknown in all of this is the state of the Middle Eastern state. So weak are so many Middle Eastern states
that ANY conflict in which they are involved could see elites cast away. Jordan is the most obvious example, but the
Arab world’s most populous state Egypt is not far behind. Logically (for Herodotus ‘skill’), it would actually
be in the best interest of all to avoid any such general conflict and try to
contain and then weaken the Islamic State.
However, such ‘logic’ would take clear vision and calm judgement neither
of which the Middle East is renowned for together with a control over events
which today many leaders simply lack. True
to form many leaders will seek what got them into power in the first place and
which created the Middle East tragedy – short-term, secret pacts.

War today in the Middle
East would not simply be another Middle Eastern conflict. And, if it breaks out there is no telling to
where it would lead...and who would be drawn in. As Herodotus wrote, “The bitterest of men’s
miseries is to have insight into much but power over nothing”.

Thursday, 10 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 10 July. On 1 July President Putin laid out
Russia’s foreign and security policy priorities to Russian ambassadors and
Heads of Mission at a closed door meeting in Moscow. Three themes stood out: the primacy of the
Russian national interest, a specifically Russian interpretation of
international law and a new European security order. Does President Putin mean what he says?

President Putin has
repeatedly expressed his world view in open fora over many years. And yet neither American nor European leaders
have appeared to have believed him.
Indeed, the only leader who has confronted Putin of late has been
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
As for the rest of the West the response to Putin’s clearly stated view
of the Russian national interest has always been one of denial. No wonder the man is frustrated.

As early as 2007 at the
Munich Security Conference Putin accused the United States of seeking world
domination. “What is a unipolar
world? No matter how we beautify this term, it means one single centre of
power, one single centre of force and one single master”. In 2008 speaking in St Peterburg Putin laid
out the principles of Russia-centric European security, “Firstly, not ensuring
one's own security at the expense of someone else's. Secondly, not undertaking
action within military alliances or coalitions that would weaken overall
security. And thirdly, not expanding military alliances at the expense of other
members of the treaty.” At
the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit President Putin told a stunned US President
George W. Bush that, “…Ukraine is not even a country. What is Ukraine? Part of it is in Eastern Europe. The greater part of it is a gift from us [Russia]”.

In other words
President Putin has been entirely consistent both in his world view and in his
determination to pursue the Russian national interest in that context. Which makes Putin’s 1 July statement
all-the-more concerning. Whilst Putin’s
statement by and large re-confirmed then President Medvedev’s 2008 Sochi
statement entitled “Five Principles of
the New World Order” it was the tone of the language and the up-shift in
ambition that was striking.

Putin used strong
language to reinforce the lengths Moscow will go to assure its interests and
‘protect’ those who regard themselves as Russian, including the use of
“self-defence”. Putin also blamed the US
and the EU for forcing Russia to intervene in Ukraine, although he was careful
not to include certain European countries in his condemnation. Putin implied that American-led “deterrence policy” was a
continuation of the Cold War. He told the assembled
Russian ‘dips’ that Moscow would never have “abandoned” Crimea to “nationalist
militants” or allowed NATO “to change” the balance of power in the Black
Sea. He also continued with his now
well-established theme that the United States seeks global
domination.

Critically, President
Putin reinforced his commitment to a new European security order by seeking to
further divide an already weak and divided Europe. He blamed President Poroshenko for the
breakdown of the ceasefire in Ukraine “in spite of the best diplomatic efforts
of Russia, Germany and France”. He also
accused the US of “blackmailing” France with penalties against its banks and
linked Washington’s actions to France’s intentions to sell Mistral assault
ships to the Russian Navy.

Putin also revealed a
long-standing and apparently genuine frustration over what he sees as US
hypocrisy. Russia, Putin asserted, sought
the mandatory application of international law “without double standards”. In real-speak this means no action without a
UN Security Council mandate, over which of course Moscow has a veto. President Putin also emphasised the continued
expansion of Russia’s armed forces and the reinforcement of Moscow’s efforts to
strengthen its sphere of influence as part of a new balance of power. With Moscow now spending 20% of all public
funding on defence and with expenditure planned on Russia’s armed forces of
some $700 billion by 2020 it is at the very least important that President
Putin’s is listened to with care. To
such a policy end Moscow would also seek to exert influence over states in the
former Soviet Union and beyond through the Commonwealth of Independent States,
a Eurasian Economic Union and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation.

So what does President Putin want? Putin understands power, weakness and
opportunity. The aim of his strategy is
twofold. First, the decoupling of the US
(and to a lesser, less important extent the UK) from the security of
Continental Europe. Second, a new
European security order built on a Russian-French-German alliance that excludes
the US and UK. Given Germany’s strategic
ambivalence towards the US as evidenced by the latest spying scandal and the
damage done by Edward Snowden President Putin also believes now is the moment
to act.

Does President Putin mean what he says? Oh yes. He always does - for good and ill.

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 8
July. Machiavelli wrote, “All courses of
action are risky. So prudence is not in
avoiding danger (it is impossible) but calculating risk and acting
decisively. Make mistakes of ambition,
not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do things, not the strength to
suffer”. NATO leaders will meet in
September in Wales in what is the most important Alliance gathering since the
1991 London Summit in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War.

In 1991 they met to
consider the implications of peace in Europe.
In 2014 they will meet to consider the profound and dangerous
implications of the rapid shift in the global balance of power away from NATO’s
member nations. This summit will very
quickly reveal whether there is sufficient unity of purpose amongst Alliance
leaders to generate ambition and if they are big enough to distinguish between
long-term strategy and short-term politics.

The stakes are very
high. London in 1991 set the future
orientation of the Alliance right up to 911.
In spite of the grand language of a Europe “whole and free” which set
the course for NATO and EU enlargement there was an implicit question in London
that has come to define the Alliance over the ensuing years, how little can be
spent on defence? Through the Wars of
the Yugoslav Succession in the 1990s, the Kosovo war, 911, Afghanistan, Libya
and elsewhere Europeans have been unwavering in their collective belief that
whatever happens they will spend less on defence. It is political dogma that was strengthened
by the 2008 financial crash and the Eurozone crisis that has driven Europe’s
retreat from strategic realism. It has
also fostered the appeasement of reality and a “we only recognise as much
threat as we can afford” culture amongst leaders.

With Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine, the creation of the Islamic State on NATO’s strategic doorstep and
the steady march of the Islamist anti-state, Iran and its nuclear ambitions, the
rapid rise of strategic China, proliferation of destructive technologies across
the world and a range of other potential threats it is clear that such self-deluding
dogma must be challenged. Indeed, with
NATO leaving Afghanistan the twenty-first century is finally beginning for the
Alliance in Wales. Therefore, the Wales Summit
should be the place where NATO properly and finally begins to prepare for the
global Cold Peace that is being inexorably fashioned beyond Alliance borders in
the battle between a West that is no longer a place but an idea and the new
forces of intolerance and expansionism.

The first casualty of
the Cold Peace is the assumption that the Americans will always be able to
defend Europe irrespective of Europe’s own defence. Indeed, a if not the central issue at Wales
should be the fashioning of a new twenty-first century transatlantic security
contract founded on two principles of political realism. First, NATO Europe can no longer play at Alliance. The vital need for the United States to
maintain credible influence and deterrence in Asia, Europe and the Middle East means
that Europe’s defence can only be assured in the first instance by Europeans
able and capable of acting autonomously in and around Europe. Second, a total security concept will be
needed. All security and defence tools
from intelligence to armed force, civil and military must be fashioned to
prevent conflicts upstream but also to engage in conflict if needs be when,
where and how it happens.

That means forces and
resources shaped to face the world as it is not as leaders would like to be. Therefore, if London was the defence premium
summit Wales must be the defence re-engagement summit built on the principle
that “security and defence matters”.

My latest report for
Wilton Park, a conference and research centre close to the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office entitled “NATO’s Post
2014 Strategic Narrative” was published last week (https://www.wiltonpark.org.uk/conference/wp1319/).
The report argues that NATO is entering
a new and unpredictable era as the Alliance shifts from campaigns and
operations to strategic contingencies. The
word ‘strategic’ is the key as it means big and that implies ambition, forces,
resources and a fundamental change of mind-set on the part of political
leaders.

There is no doubt that
prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea the Wales Summit would have been little
more than a glorified photo op. Leaders
would have somewhat disingenuously declared “mission accomplished” in
Afghanistan. Some thought would have
been given to the preservation of military interoperability between Alliance
forces and some declaration made about NATO’s Open Door and future membership
and partnerships.

Now the Wales Summit must
begin NATO’s search for the answer to five twenty-first century strategic
questions which finally operationalise the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept and the
three core tasks of collective defence, crisis management and co-operative
security. How can NATO provide credible collective defence to its members? What type of reassurance can NATO provide to
both members and partners? What support
can NATO realistically offer to states on its margins? What relationship should now be sought with
an assertive Russia? What more can NATO
allies do to support the US in its global mission and at the same time ensure
and assure security and defence in and around Europe?

In other words Wales
must answer THE pivotal question; what is NATO for now? Answers on a postcard please.

Friday, 4 July 2014

4 July. Der Tag. HMS
Queen Elizabeth is enormous.
Officially named today by Her Majesty the Queen after her illustrious
sixteenth century forebear she is the largest warship ever built for the Royal
Navy. She sits in her Rosyth dock
against the backdrop of the massive Forth Railway Bridge itself a signature British
engineering marvel from a previous age.
Displacing 65,000 tons the ‘QE’ is the first of Britain’s 2 new super
aircraft carriers. Her flight deck is
the size of 60 Wimbledon tennis courts or 3 World Cup pitches. When commissioned in 2017 she will carry up
to 50 aircraft in a hangar that is the size of 60 Olympic-size swimming
pools. She is twice the width and some
90 metres longer than her predecessor HMS
Illustrious which sits alongside her.

HMS
Queen Elizabeth is also far more than a ship. She is a potent symbol of British power,
unity, alliance and partnership that will fly the White Ensign the most famous flag of the most famous navy in the
world. Indeed, a navy that in many ways
made the modern world. In tandem with
her sister-ship HMS Prince of Wales she
will act as a hub for a new type of agile and mobile global reach military
power projection that will assure and ensure maritime and land security across
the globe.

HMS
Queen Elizabeth will exert influence and effect across
three strategic spaces – the peace-space, the security-space, and the battle-space. Able to reach 80% of the world’s population
she will act in crises as diverse as disaster relief and help prevent and deter
full-blown war which cannot be ruled out in the hyper-competitive twenty-first
century.

HMS
Queen Elizabeth is a symbol of national unity. She was built in sections at 6 shipyards
across the United Kingdom. Indeed, she
is perhaps the most innovative ship ever built with each section bought to
Rosyth to be welded together. As some in
Scotland contemplate secession she is a potent symbol of what this old great
gathering of peoples can still achieve in the world together.

HMS
Queen Elizabeth is a symbol of alliance. She is testament to Britain’s determination
to inject real power into both NATO and the EU.
As Americans complain about burden-sharing or the lack of it here is a
European ally that in spite of many challenges is willing to invest in the
highest-end of high-end military capabilities.
Alongside the new Type 45 destroyers and Astute-class nuclear attack
submarines joining or soon to join the Royal Navy this great ship will put
Britain at the heart of NATO and EU task groups. Indeed, her very existence will underpin all
the navies across both the Alliance and Union.

HMS
Queen Elizabeth is a symbol of partnership. Britain made an historic mistake in the early
1970s by focusing exclusively on Europe and what became the EU. Whether Britain
stays or leaves the EU this ship will help re-invigorate Britain’s traditional
partnerships with countries like Australia, India and Japan (see history). She will also help reinforce key partnerships
with close, powerful friends such as France and Germany. Critically, she will help keep America strong
where America needs to be strong as Washington faces a growing gap between what
it needs to be able to do and what it can afford to do. To that end HMS Queen Elizabeth will be a vital
partner of both the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps.

My belief in HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales has been absolute
from the day theywere
conceived. This is not simply because of
the power projection or fighting power the two ships will afford London or the
Carrier-enabled Power Projection in the strategy-documents, or indeed because I
favour the Royal Navy over the British Army or Royal Air Force. I do not.
As I write in my new book Little
Britain (www.amazon.com) my belief in
these ships is because of what they say about Britain and its future as a major
power. This has nothing to do with Britannia
ruling the waves but rather the willingness of a twenty-first European state to
confront political realism with imagination and determination built on the
recognition that credible military capability still underpins all power and
influence.

HMS
Queen Elizabeth is a national strategic asset. She is an entirely appropriate statement of
strategic ambition for one of the world’s leading political, economic and
military powers and will serve Britain and its allies and partners out to 2060
and beyond. As such she will help reinvigorate
the British strategic brand critical to keeping the West strong – the West that
is today an idea rather than a place.

HMS
Queen Elizabeth is a symbol of my country; a ship and a country
of which I am justly proud. HMS Queen Elizabeth is a big-picture
ship of a big-picture country in a big-picture world.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.